“Soldiers in petticoats” on the British screen: a mirror to historiography

Les suffragettes ont longtemps été stéréotypées et ridiculisées sur les écrans britanniques, reprenant les représentations dominantes de la culture populaire. Souvent utilisée pour ancrer les récits dans l'Angleterre édouardienne, la figure de la suffragette a aussi été très tôt utilisée pour incarner toutes sortes de rébellion et l'aspiration des femmes à plus de liberté. Cependant, le trait le plus frappant concernant la représentation des suffragettes à l'écran est de constater à quel point elle reflète l’historiographie dominante de son temps. En particulier, les mouvements suffragistes sont identifiés par un nombre de tropes récurrents, de scènes emblématiques et de noms iconiques tels les Pankhurst, qui ont éclipsé la diversité du mouvement. S’appuyant sur les analyses historiographiques de Jane Marcus, Sandra Holton, Maroula Joannou et June Purvis, cet article vise à montrer comment les films et séries britanniques non seulement utilisent les représentations populaires de la suffragette mais reflètent aussi l’historiographie dominante du mouvement suffragiste. Il montre notamment comment les films et séries ont privilégié des récits qui s’alignent sur l’historiographie des années 1960 et 1970 dominée par l'école socialiste-féministe, et qui perpétuent le « métarécit » de la militante sacrificielle, récit institué par les mémoires des suffragettes et la Suffragette Fellowship.Suffragettes on the British screen have long been an object of ridicule and stereotyping, following the prevailing representations of popular culture. Often used to anchor the storyline in Edwardian England, the figure of the suffragette has also very early on been used to epitomise all types of rebelliousness and women’s aspiration for more freedom. However, the most striking feature about the representation of the suffragettes on screen is how closely it follows the prevailing historiography of the time. In particular, the suffrage movement has become identified with a set number of recurring tropes, iconic scenes and names like the Pankhursts that have eclipsed the diversity of the movement. Drawing on the historiographical analyses of Jane Marcus, Sandra Holton, Maroula Joannou and June Purvis, this article aims to show how British films and series not only make use of popular representations of the suffragette but also actually reflect the dominant historiography of the suffrage movement. In particular, it shows how films and series have been foregrounding narratives that align themselves with the historiography of the late 1960s and 1970s dominated by the socialist-feminist school, and that perpetuate the canonised “master narrative” of the sacrificial militant, instituted by both the suffragettes’ memoirs and the Suffragette Fellowship

Surface and Depth in Korea (Cathal Black, 1995)

International audienc

Ron Peck’s Strip Jack Naked (UK, 1991): Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gay Man

Shot some thirteen years after Nighthawks, Strip Jack Naked could be taken for a mere making-of documentary relating the difficulties that Ron Peck encountered in making his first feature film in 1978. Being one of the first British films to openly deal with the gay community, Nighthawks, which itself applies a documentary veneer to its subject, proved to be highly controversial. Strip Jack Naked, however, encompasses the experimental and the autobiographical. Through the editing of diverse archive materials, photographs, newsreel and film excerpts, the film evokes what it meant for a young man to grow up in the 1960s and 1970s while discovering his homosexual orientation. Thus, through the personal case of the film-maker, Strip Jack Naked develops into a personal history of gay culture in Great Britain. In Strip Jack Naked, Ron Peck adopts a double reflexive approach: as the subject of his own narrative as well as through the use of a voice-over that addresses the viewer with both directness and intimacy, the film-maker builds up a personal counter-history of Great Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s; as a film-maker, he raises the question of the representation of minorities in society and most specifically of the role an artist plays in this representation

From the Banned Telefilm to the Feature Film: the Two Versions of Alan Clarke’s Scum (1977-1979)

Alan Clarke’s Scum, originally made for the BBC’s Play for Today series in 1977, has become a cause célèbre in the history of film censorship. Although the film had already been scheduled, it was eventually banned and only broadcast in 1991, a year after the director’s death. How the decision was reached remains unclear but there is no denying that the film was deemed too controversial both by the Home Office and the newly-appointed BBC One controller Bill Cotton. Scum is set in a borstal, the name given to institutions for young offenders (a system that was to be abolished in 1982), and depicts life under a daily regimen of violence, bullying and racism. In response to the censoring of the original TV version, director Alan Clarke and screenwriter Roy Minton decided to re-shoot the film two years later for cinema release. Starting with a comparison between the two versions we will examine the different modalities of production and reception related to the two different media (television and cinema). Then we will analyse what makes the representation of a sensitive question such as living conditions in a borstal acceptable or not, considering the degrees of fictionalisation of the representation.Le film d’Alan Clarke Scum, réalisé en 1977 dans le cadre de la série BBC Play for Today, est devenu un cas célèbre de censure exercée par la chaîne publique britannique. Alors que sa diffusion sur le petit écran était déjà programmée, le film fut finalement censuré et ne put être retransmis qu’en 1991, un an après la mort du metteur en scène. Les circonstances précises de cette interdiction restent obscures mais il ne fait pas de doute que le téléfilm fut jugé trop polémique à la fois par le Home Office et Billy Cotton qui venait d’être nommé Contrôleur à la BBC One. De fait, Scum se situe dans un « borstal », nom donné aux institutions pour jeunes délinquants (institutions qui seront abolies en 1982) et dépeint la vie de ces jeunes soumis à un régime quotidien de violences, de brimades et de racisme. En réponse à la censure touchant le téléfilm, Alan Clarke et le scénariste Roy Minton décidèrent deux ans plus tard de tourner à nouveau le film cette fois pour le grand écran. Partant d’une comparaison des deux versions, nous examinerons les différentes modalités de production et de réception respectives aux deux média (télévision et cinéma) puis nous analyserons comment la représentation d’un sujet aussi sensible que la vie dans un « borstal » est traitée, ce qui la rend acceptable ou non selon son degré de fictionnalisation

Derek Jarman : lyrisme et radicalité

National audienc

The Secret Life of Secret Agents: Alan Bennett and John Schlesinger’s An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1991)

Although biopics are still widely held in critical disdain, a number of new stimulating perspectives on the genre have recently emerged. One original approach consists in tackling the biopic as a form of adaptation and an example of intermedial rewriting, thus enabling to overreach the traditional fiction-versus-fact debate. This approach seems all the more appropriate when the main characters’ lives are notoriously elusive and shrouded in secrecy. Because their lives are wrapped in mystery, spies have long been figures of fascination and speculation, spawning some of the most long-lasting and profitable fictions in cinema. And yet, biopics about actual secret agents are scarce and scanty. How then to conceive of a film that deals with the lives of secret agents while accounting for the very secrecy that defines them? This is the challenge screenwriter Alan Bennett and director John Schlesinger have taken up in two films that form a diptych on two of the most notorious spies in British history, Guy Burgess in An Englishman Abroad (1983) and Anthony Blunt in A Question of Attribution (1991). While displaying a sustained concern for “national biography”, both films prove early examples of biopics conceived as self-reflexive and intermedial allegories. Rather than claiming to disclose the real ‘self’ of their biographees, the films choose to imaginatively engage with the deliberate entanglement of life and fiction while foregrounding their dramatic strategies of representations, leading to playful reflections on appearances, on the way they are coded and may be decoded